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On Friday evening, a US House of Representatives committee released H.R. 5666, an authorization act for NASA. Such bills are not required for an agency to function, and they do not directly provide funding—that comes from the appropriations committees in the House and Senate. Authorization bills provide a "sense" of Congress, however and indicate what legislators will be willing to fund in the coming years.

The big-picture takeaway from the bipartisan legislation is that it rejects the Artemis Program put forth by the Trump White House, which established the Moon as a cornerstone of human exploration for the next decade or two and as a place for NASA astronauts to learn the skills needed to expand toward Mars in the late 2030s and 2040s. Instead, the House advocates for a "flags-and-footprints" strategy whereby astronauts make a few short visits to the Moon beginning in 2028 and then depart for a Mars orbit mission by 2033.

Space policy

Whatever one might think about NASA's Artemis Program to land humans on the Moon by 2024, it attempted to learn from decades of space policy failure. Artemis set a near-term target, 2024, for a human return to the Moon that provided some urgency for NASA to get moving. It also sought to develop a "sustainable" path with meaningful activities on the surface of the Moon, including polar landings, efforts to tap lunar resources (the House bill specifically prohibits this), and establishment of a base.

Moreover, Artemis recognized that spaceflight has changed in 50 years. The Artemis program included new players in the industry, such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, as well as up-and-coming companies like Maxar, along with the established aerospace giants like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. NASA's plans, essentially, invited everyone to the table. Over time, the companies that provided the most reliable services at the lowest costs were likely to get more contracts.

Further Reading

The Artemis Program also emphasized that NASA should be one of many customers, instead of the sole customer. It placed an emphasis on private investment in rockets and spacecraft—asking contractors to put more skin in the game. By opting for fixed-price contracts for the Human Landing System instead of cost-plus deals, the Artemis Program attempted to obtain services at lower costs while also giving contractors incentive to deliver on time.

The Boeing bill?

The House authorization act, which will now be considered in committee before going before the full House, rolls a lot of this back. Its proposed Human Landing System, which will take astronauts from lunar orbit, offers the prime example of this. The bill states that:

The United States should retain "full ownership" of the Human Landing System, and unfettered insight into its design and development. In other words, it must be let under a cost-plus contract

The lunar plans should utilize "the Orion vehicle and an integrated lunar landing system carried on an Exploration Upper Stage-enhanced Space Launch System for the human lunar landing missions.

The Gateway to Mars shall not be required for the conduct of human lunar landing missions.

The net effect of this is to shut down all potential competition and cost savings for the lunar lander. It is particularly telling that there is only one company—Boeing—that has proposed building an integrated lunar lander, has the contract for the Exploration Upper Stage, and is building core stages for the Space Launch System rocket. Boeing has also tried to minimize use of the Gateway.

With the House bill, legislators seem to be trying to take NASA's human exploration program and give it over to the Boeing Company, going back to an era of cost-plus contracting.

What about Mars?

Some spaceflight advocates have cheered the legislation, as it refocuses NASA's human spaceflight priorities on Mars. More likely, the House legislation returns NASA to the nebulous "Journey to Mars" days of the Obama administration, which talked about sending humans to Mars in the 2030s without ever putting out concrete plans or providing the requisite funding.

Further Reading

Pretty much everyone in the spaceflight community agrees that it would be amazing to see humans set foot on Mars. But it is hard to believe the House is serious about this activity unless it doubles the human exploration budget and actually requires that funding go to the big technical challenges, like landing large vehicles on Mars, surface habitats, power on Mars, and more. That is absent from this bill.

Effectively, this probably would consign NASA to another decade of spending billions of dollars on "capabilities" such as the Space Launch System without actually sending astronauts anywhere beyond low-Earth orbit.

Reactions

NASA's Advisory Council has been warmly supportive of the Artemis Plan proposed by the White House for a lot of the reasons described above—it provides the agency with a clear goal and timeline, involves both commercial and traditional aerospace, and moves beyond the "flags and footprints" of Apollo to something more sustainable.

The chairman of the council's Human Exploration and Operations Committee, Wayne Hale, said he did not want to get ahead of his committee members when it came to the House legislation and what it would mean for NASA. However, he did tell Ars, "The proposed authorization bill is disappointing."

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation was more blunt in a statement issued Sunday night: “As written, the NASA Authorization bill would not create a sustainable space exploration architecture and would instead set NASA up for failure by eliminating commercial participation and competition in key programs. As NASA and the White House have repeatedly stated, any sustainable space exploration effort must bring together the best of government and commercial industry to achieve a safe and affordable 21st century space enterprise."

Further Reading

And Homer Hickam, a former NASA engineer and the author of Rocket Boys, commented, "If this or anything like it is approved, I will resign from the National Space Council's User Advisory Group. After years of me and so many others urging NASA to get out of LEO and go back to the moon and this time to stay, it would be too much to bear to now watch at close range it being ruined by a Mars fantasy, probably while other nations make a lunar land rush."

The House Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Technology will hold a hearing Wednesday to mark up this legislation. Further discussions will take place on February 10, when the White House releases its 2021 budget request, which will contain a five-year funding plan for Artemis along with a request for Congress to fund it.

You've now been reported. Next time you see me reply to another poster, keep your neck wound in. Certainly STFU about your mum, sister and boogers.

You really think a competent mod is going to take an account that only recently has become particularly active reporting a more regularly active account that doesn't normally get reported seriously especially when far more are reporting the account with less regular activity?

You think you are that important that anyone would consider you reporting them to the mods as a threat?

Pot calling the kettle black with claiming others are narcissistic

If they want my clicks and to allow this plcae not to become an echo chamber. It's worked on other sites. The best thing to do would be to disect my threads that upset people instead of buddying up with your ideological pals.

What caused offense was me pointing out Conservatism looks for the tricke down effect. That nutter 'daveisheragain' went mental and started going on about 'pissing on his head'

Wrong I'm not a Narcissist. They just fascinate me.

So a factual observation that "conservative" politicians claim that lowering taxes on large corporations will lead to them hiring more people because they can afford to, instead of just meaning they can pass more of their profits to their shareholders because you dont hire more people unless you believe doing so will help generate more revenue than their wages and benefits cost? You found THAT offensive?

The current generation of trolls is uninteresting. Anyone remember that person who was convinced that the XS-1 Phantom Express was actually a cover for a flyback booster, which would replace the solid boosters on SLS and create some sort of super-rocket that would be better and cheaper than Starship? Whatever happened to that person? At least those arguments focused on weird technical issues and showing that their ideas were unfeasible.

It may well be the "I don't own Amazon nor run the government" aspect of my person but I consider tens of billions of dollars significant funding over any timeframe.

Money is relative. 10s of billions is significant to SpaceX. 10s of billions is legal fees to Boeing. If you want significant progress for your 10s of billions, give it to SpaceX. If you want significant progress out of Boeing, it's got to be enough money to at least distract them from their 737Max problems, and that's a lot more money.

My originally (downvoted) comment "You need massive funding to get a crew to and from Mars." over the idea of SpaceX doing it themselves.

It was suggested that I was wrong, that it would only take "10s of billions". It has been stated that "10s of billions is significant to SpaceX."

I admit that "significant" isn't literally "massive"; but it seems that the people arguing with me are agreeing with me.

Space X is awesome. I own every type of product Tesla makes (solar, battery, car). Boeing has become terrible. Modern US government is not doing its job (while I'm a huge advocate of government and its ability to help, it has to a large degree, become a method for taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich.

And getting a manned mission to Mars take a lot of money. And there's not much money to be made in the first manned trip to Mars (relative to the cost), or, really, the 50th.

As such, a Mars trip is far more likely to be publicly funded than privately.

This is absolutely insane. I smell Senator Shelby all over this trying to pull strings.

I smell Boeing trying to create a new revenue stream to replace the one lost in the 737 MAX debacle.

Nowhere near enough, no this is Boeing Space recognizing that the pork launch gig is almost up and trying to get all they can while they can

I wouldn’t be so sure that space pork is over.

Pork spending is one of the main goals for Senators and House members. In a federal model where politicians are chosen from regions, their success in elections is often decided by the amount of money and jobs they can claim having brought to the region. Irrespective if this is wise use of government money - they try to get as much pork shipped back to their home state as they can.

This is absolutely insane. I smell Senator Shelby all over this trying to pull strings.

I smell Boeing trying to create a new revenue stream to replace the one lost in the 737 MAX debacle.

Nowhere near enough, no this is Boeing Space recognizing that the pork launch gig is almost up and trying to get all they can while they can

I wouldn’t be so sure that space pork is over.

Pork spending is one of the main goals for Senators and House members. In a federal model where politicians are chosen from regions, their success in elections is often decided by the amount of money and jobs they can claim having brought to the region. Irrespective if this is wise use of government money - they try to get as much pork shipped back to their home state as they can.

Pork is pretty much unavoidable.

I said Pork LAUNCH not space pork, there is a difference. Space Pork includes payloads, the things that actually have the tech that isn't likely to get developed without gov funding, and can back feed into the economy.

This move by the House truly does signal the end of the slim hope that NASA would put people back on the Moon. We've heard that for years, watched HSF stagnate in LEO, while projects like the X-33, Delta Clipper and Constellation came and went. That's not to say those were necessarily great projects, but they aimed to actually DO something. When Artemis was announced, and RFPs were put out for manned and unmanned missions, it seemed that finally we might see something happen. But no, Lucy pulled the football away once again, and we are now going to spend X number of years watching Boeing screw up yet again, come in late and overbudget, receiving performance bonuses they didn't earn, and then failing to deliver.

If it weren't for the fact of SpaceX actually pushing the envelope and flying newer and better things year after year, I'd despair of the US ever going beyond LEO with humans.

That makes sense, and I feel like that's how space exploration should be looked at for the foreseeable future. I'm only afraid that Mars will end up being another moon where we have a few years of awesome stuff but then 'interest' dies down and nothing else happens.

BUT if NASA doesn't do it, at least now it seems like someone from the private industry will.

My argument is that Mars being the second easiest place to sustain human life in the solar system, and due to the fact that because of the synodic cycle even a flags and footprints there would have to be close to basic requirements for a permanent base, Mars might be the best place to bootstrap an interplanetary economy.

I would think both Mars and the Moon would be similarly difficult to sustain life. The saving grace for the moon is there aren't any planet wide dust storms to worry about. I also feel like the the lack of atmosphere would make building on the moon easier. Though I haven't read up on anything on either case, if you do have any info I'd love to read/watch it.

Also are the Ars comments usually this trolly? I haven't posted here in a while.

The current generation of trolls is uninteresting. Anyone remember that person who was convinced that the XS-1 Phantom Express was actually a cover for a flyback booster, which would replace the solid boosters on SLS and create some sort of super-rocket that would be better and cheaper than Starship? Whatever happened to that person? At least those arguments focused on weird technical issues and showing that their ideas were unfeasible.

The recent cancellation of XS-1 must have hit them hard.

The Ulterior was amazing. He managed to be wrong about nearly everything. If I found myself agreeing with something he wrote, I knew I needed to do some research to figure out what I got wrong.

Not that massive for a cost-optimized effort. Tens of billions, probably, but much less then hundreds. Many companies and some individuals could do it right now, and even more when someone perfects fully reusable rockets.

Case and point: SpaceX already building a prototype while the government is celebrating a accomplishment that was never impressive to anyone but the people with blinders on (late and over budget). The government is behind the curve already, so "money" doesn't seem to be the sole factor (or the key one).

Money in =/= quality or efficiency, not when the government is directly involved. You get some competition though, and when this boondoggle fails, heads roll since there is a measuring stick. At the very least, it motivates lean spending and accountability. The reason these House members keep getting reelected is because they can hide behind "no alternatives", but SpaceX has exposed a ton of their corruption by doing what they've failed (intentionally) to do for decades, quicker, safer, cheaper. Proving that you DON'T need government to do this stuff (once upon a time, sure, but the government has recently been systematically chasing off all the experts that knew how and replacing them with yes-men empty suits...).

You seem to be agreeing with me in a way that makes it sound like you are disagreeing.

I agree there's signifigant bloat. I laud the efficiency and innovation of SpaceX in particular. I consider "tens of billions of dollars" to be "significant funding"

That makes sense, and I feel like that's how space exploration should be looked at for the foreseeable future. I'm only afraid that Mars will end up being another moon where we have a few years of awesome stuff but then 'interest' dies down and nothing else happens.

BUT if NASA doesn't do it, at least now it seems like someone from the private industry will.

My argument is that Mars being the second easiest place to sustain human life in the solar system, and due to the fact that because of the synodic cycle even a flags and footprints there would have to be close to basic requirements for a permanent base, Mars might be the best place to bootstrap an interplanetary economy.

I would think both Mars and the Moon would be similarly difficult to sustain life. The saving grace for the moon is there aren't any planet wide dust storms to worry about. I also feel like the the lack of atmosphere would make building on the moon easier. Though I haven't read up on anything on either case, if you do have any info I'd love to read/watch it.

Also are the Ars comments usually this trolly? I haven't posted here in a while.

With local resources alone Luna CANT sustain life, it lacks the required elements in meaningful quantities and easily accessible forms to do so. Mars however has those resources in relative abundance and doesn't have the temperature and pressure extremes most other non-Earth bodies that have said resources in quantity have.

Unless you attach a hefty check along with your email, your rep is going to be completely deaf to anything you say. As they say, money talks, bullshit walks.

This is incorrect. What talks is a vote. If you are a constituent you will be listened to far more than most. Yes, a vote plus a campaign donation helps. But that also goes the other direction: a suggestion that a campaign donation to an opponent in the next election can also carry weight.

One of the most impactful things you can do is actually setup a meeting with your rep's local office and spend some time face to face with a staffer. You could even sign up for this and join us in Washington:

Despite the fact that Boeing is the 500-lb lobbying gorilla, I can't quite figure out why the Democrats would go this way for their first crack at writing an authorization bill since they came to power.

While Boeing aircraft is largely a blue state operation, Boeing space stuff is mostly in the South, which is solid red state territory. If we start from the premise that Congress thinks that the space program is merely a conduit for rewarding your friends with pork and punishing your enemies by denying it, this bill doesn't do that.

Instead, it deemphasizes commercial operations, which would be mostly manufactured in California and Washington, in favor of more Boeing stuff in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. It further reduces launch rates, which doesn't help a region of Florida that's sorta-kinda blue, and where even marginal gains could make a big difference this November.

There's a case to be made that House members care more about campaign contributions than they do about actual constituencies, and Boeing can deliver the cash more effectively than the lobbying newbs at SpaceX and BO. There's also a case to be made that the leadership cares more about giving Trump the finger than they do about consolidating voting blocs for the upcoming election. But that would make the Democrats stupid, which...

This is absolutely insane. I smell Senator Shelby all over this trying to pull strings.

I smell Boeing trying to create a new revenue stream to replace the one lost in the 737 MAX debacle.

Nowhere near enough, no this is Boeing Space recognizing that the pork launch gig is almost up and trying to get all they can while they can

I wouldn’t be so sure that space pork is over.

Pork spending is one of the main goals for Senators and House members. In a federal model where politicians are chosen from regions, their success in elections is often decided by the amount of money and jobs they can claim having brought to the region. Irrespective if this is wise use of government money - they try to get as much pork shipped back to their home state as they can.

Pork is pretty much unavoidable.

I said Pork LAUNCH not space pork, there is a difference. Space Pork includes payloads, the things that actually have the tech that isn't likely to get developed without gov funding, and can back feed into the economy.

Agree. I'm all for space pork if the end result is something worthwhile and it actually helps the many not the few. Artemis, SLS/Orion, Gateway ain't it.

This is absolutely insane. I smell Senator Shelby all over this trying to pull strings.

I smell Boeing trying to create a new revenue stream to replace the one lost in the 737 MAX debacle.

Nowhere near enough, no this is Boeing Space recognizing that the pork launch gig is almost up and trying to get all they can while they can

I wouldn’t be so sure that space pork is over.

Pork spending is one of the main goals for Senators and House members. In a federal model where politicians are chosen from regions, their success in elections is often decided by the amount of money and jobs they can claim having brought to the region. Irrespective if this is wise use of government money - they try to get as much pork shipped back to their home state as they can.

Pork is pretty much unavoidable.

I said Pork LAUNCH not space pork, there is a difference. Space Pork includes payloads, the things that actually have the tech that isn't likely to get developed without gov funding, and can back feed into the economy.

Agree. I'm all for space pork if the end result is something worthwhile and it actually helps the many not the few. Artemis, SLS/Orion, Gateway ain't it.

Artemis tries to be with the commercial partners aspect, SLS/Orion bog that down.

No raging now. Just respond in good grace with carefully exacting veracitude. Save on cost an at 25 cents a letter. 😁

Spoiler: show

Nope, no rage. He couldn't affect me emotionally in a million years. I'm doing it on purpose so we can get him out of here for good.

So you admit to deliberately disrupting the thread just as much as what's-his-name.

Thus reducing you to his level. Well done.

If that's your opinion, you're welcome to it. If you knew this guy, you might have a different one. I am resorting to tactics that will hopefully get him banned sooner than later. You'll soon know I am nothing like him. Think what you will. Watch and learn.

Or the mods see your posts and don't ban him. I mean you are openly stating you are actively trying to get someone banned if I were a mod that would lean me against banning someone.

How about report the post and move on. Instead you have turned the thread into a dumpster fire. Good job.

I'll take that risk. Thanks for your opinion. I'm doing this for the greater good. If he keeps up his posting, you'll discover who he is. Good day folks. Sometimes the unpopular tactic works in the end.

I already "discovered" who he is by the first post, reported him to the mods and ignored him. He is a troll and hopefully banned and when he comes back hopefully banned again and again and again until he gives up. Until that happens however thanks to your vigilante efforts I get to see all the posts you quote while you shit on the floor because he is also shitting on the floor and you think if two people are shitting on the floor instead of one then the house will fill up with shit sooner or something. Good job.

If it weren't for the fact of SpaceX actually pushing the envelope and flying newer and better things year after year, I'd despair of the US ever going beyond LEO with humans.

I think we need a good old-fashioned space race to focus the mind. That's why I'm rooting for China to start making noises about going to the moon.

That is literally the only way NASA will get the money to go to the Moon on their terms. More likely, Congress will see Chinese taikonauts on the Moon, go into full Sputnik mode, and demand to know why their is a "moonbase gap", while blissfully ignoring their massive contribution to the perceived gap. What will make things different this time is that SpaceX will likely have a vehicle that can do the job faster than NASA alone, and do it in awe-inspiring style. Nothing says "America is still #1" than a big ol' Starship with a couple dozen astronauts looking down on a puny Chinese lander with a couple of taikonauts.

This is intensely frustrating, but realistically Musk is going to be doing donuts on the Moon and Mars in a space-rated Cybertruck long before any of these idiotic political space plans launch anything.

I'll take that risk. Thanks for your opinion. I'm doing this for the greater good. If he keeps up his posting, you'll discover who he is. Good day folks. Sometimes the unpopular tactic works in the end.

I already "discovered" who he is by the first post. He is a troll and hopefully banned and when he comes back hopefully banned again and again and again until he gives up.

Regardless separate from the troll YOU have been turning the thread into a dumpster fire so good job.

It was a learning experience for me. That guy is literally the first person I have ever used the Foe designation for. Live and learn.

Edit: and can anyone tell me how to block this guy so I can't see his drivel?